Former US President Teddy Roosevelt’s Drunken Rampage in Nairobi | Hacker News Reader

Former US President Teddy Roosevelt’s Drunken Rampage in Nairobi

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71 pointsBonfaceKilz16 comments

This is all good, but the best was last imho.

> Two years after his Africa trip, an assassin shot him [Roosevelt] while he climbed a podium in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The bullet went through his reading glasses cases, a thick sheet of papers bearing his speech, and into his chest. Undeterred, the badass ex-president climbed to the podium and started a 90-minute speech with “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”

As people grow into maturity and are taught the minimal slivers of history they're required to know, it all comes off as so dry, just names and a condensed series of reforms. Then they form their models of the universe on that.

What's lost is the irrational, the continuum of grit, the human condition, and then bizarre that's always been normal. And with that, here's an illustrated recording of president LBJ ordering pants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR_myjOr0OU

Slightly off topic, sorry. I just have to ask if the hilarious LBJ call is authentic or fake?

LBJ's home office in Texas was preserved, and is still on display as-is to this day. On the couch is a pillow embroidered "This is my ranch, and I do as I damn please!"

Authentic. And by all accounts, he was drunk-dialing in '64. Think you can hear a belch at some point.

Edit: if I recall correctly, he liked to drive people around his ranch while drinking whiskey out of a styrofoam cup, with lots of ice. When he needed a refill, he'd stick his hand out the window and shake the cup, at which point a secret service agent would sprint from the car pacing behind him to fetch him a refill.

And then there was the thing where he liked to drive new guests into a lake to scare them, since they didn't know about his amphibious vehicle, but that's a different story.

that's a brilliant piece of history to save for posterity. also it can lead you to a rabbit hole of further recorded phone discussions with Kennedy about MLK, and so on. what a treasure.

Apparently he successfully sued a publication for libel after they said "Roosevelt gets drunk, and that not infrequently, and all his intimates know it."

https://www.nytimes.com/1913/05/24/archives/roosevelts-libel...

More: https://vinepair.com/articles/roosevelt-drinking-habits/

They don't make them like that any more

Yeah, nowadays, when you shoot a President from across the street, they actually die. Teddy got shot point-blank in the chest and didn't even stop his speechifying.

Reagan survived an attempt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_assassination_of_Ron...

In 1974, South Korean President Park Chung-Hee survived an assassination attempt while delivering an address. His wife was mortally wounded and carried away to an ambulance and he finished the speech.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mun_Se-gwang

President Park was eventually assassinated five years later.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Park_Chung-...

This is awesome

I have no respect for this guy as he sold out the whole Eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta.

Apparently he did that after dying in 1919 :facepalm:

What was his other option (and effort/cost/etc)?

not the OP but probably to instantly launch another bloodbath in Europe to get some "respect"? But then again, it always amazes me how strongly opinionated some people can be when they don't even read which person this whole post is about.

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